KANAWHA
Michael C. Scoggins
Culture & Heritage Museums
Revised November 2011
Over the last 400 years, the name “Kanawha” has been variously associated with
an Indian tribe, a river in West Virginia, and a pre-Revolutionary War battle, not to
mention the names of several towns, counties, US Navy warships, locomotives, yachts,
and insurance companies. At the beginning of the American Civil War it was even an
early name for the state of West Virginia, which separated itself from Virginia over the
issue of secession. The name “Kanawha” is also famous in York County, South Carolina
as the nickname of an early colonial settler who homesteaded in what is now the Fort
Mill Township. This settler is known to area residents as Thomas “Kanawha” Spratt.
The word Kanawha is widely recognized to be of Native American origin, but the
exact meaning is a matter of dispute. An internet search for the English translation of
Kanawha yielded at least four different versions of the word’s meaning, all of which are
contradictory. One source states that Kanawha is a Shawnee word meaning “new water,”
while another claims it is a Catawba word meaning “friendly brother.” Another popular
translation is “place of white stone.” Obviously all of these versions cannot be correct,
and my own experience with modern translations of early personal and tribal names
indicates that these are often largely guesswork.
The earliest recorded use of the term in colonial America was as the name of a
Native American tribe. This tribe, a branch of the Algonquin family, was closely related
to the Nanticokes and Delawares who resided in what are now the states of Delaware and
Maryland. During the seventeenth century, the name of this tribe was variously recorded
by early English settlers as “Conoys,” “Conoise,” “Canawese,” “Cohnawas,”
“Canaways,” and ultimately, “Kanawhas.” By the early eighteenth century some of the
Kanawhas had migrated to the southwest and settled along the large river in West
Virginia that today bears their name.
The Kanawha River is an interesting river for a variety of reasons, and it played
an important role in the early settlement of southwest Virginia and the Ohio River region.
Arising in the Allegheny Mountains along the border between the modern states of
Virginia and West Virginia, the Kanawha River is the largest river in West Virginia and a
major tributary of the Ohio River. It is formed by the confluence of a number of smaller
rivers, including the New River in Virginia and the Gauley and Elk Rivers in West
Virginia, and is remarkable for the fact that it flows from southeast to northwest, one of
very few rivers in the United States that does so. It enters the Ohio River near the town of
Point Pleasant in Mason County, West Virginia. Although the Kanawha River received
its name from the Kanawha tribe, the Kanawha Indians were not the major players in this
region during the years of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. The
dominant tribe in the area at that time was the Shawnee, and it was their interaction with
the early settlers of the region that would eventually give Thomas Spratt his nickname.
Following the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British government
placed a ban on any further settlement west of the Allegheny and Appalachian
Mountains. The Native Americans who lived in this area, especially the Ohio River
valley and the present states of West Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky, expected
the British government to restrict the flow of settlers pushing ever westward through the
mountain passes. The British government proved unable to do this, and during the years
following the French and Indian War clashes between frontier settlers and Native
Americans became increasingly frequent and bloody. By early 1774 the tension between
the Indians and colonial settlers along the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia had
brought matters to the brink of all-out warfare. The Indians along the western frontier of
Virginia, in particular the powerful and warlike Shawnee, launched a number of raids
against white setters who were encroaching on their lands. These settlers, in turn,
retaliated by attacking Indian villages and committing a number of atrocities against the
natives, which caused the Shawnee to finally declare war.
On June 10, 1774, Virginia’s royal governor John Murray, better known as Lord
Dunmore, called out the militia of western Virginia to put down the Indian revolt; this
campaign became popularly known as “Dunmore’s War.” Dunmore established his
headquarters at Fort Pitt (now Pittsburg) and began raising militia from the northern
Virginia counties, while ordering Colonel Andrew Lewis to mobilize the militia from the
southwestern counties. Dunmore’s plan was to march his men down the Ohio River from
Fort Pitt while Lewis marched up the Kanawha River; they would join forces where the
Kanawha entered the Ohio and then launch their campaign against the Indian towns on
the Scioto River. While Dunmore and Lewis were raising their troops, the Shawnee chief
Cornstalk began mobilizing his own confederation of Shawnee, Miami, Wyandot
(Huron), and Ottawa Indians to attack Lewis before he could rendezvous with Dunmore.
During that same month of June 1774, a Virginia militia officer named Captain
Daniel Cresap traveled to South Carolina and recruited 120 Catawba warriors to help put
down the Shawnee, who were ancient enemies of the Catawba. Cresap returned to
Virginia with the Catawbas and sixteen white men. While crossing the Allegheny
Mountains, the party was attacked by hostile Indians and seven of the white militiamen
were killed. The Catawbas pursued the hostiles and caught up with them; there was a
skirmish and the Catawbas captured two of the enemy warriors. Shortly after this
engagement the Catawbas returned to South Carolina. This engagment and other such
small battles during the summer of 1774 were the opening volleys of the larger conflict
that became known as Dunmore’s War, which culminated in a monumental battle on the
Kanawha River in October.
As Lord Dunmore languished at Fort Pitt, apparently in no great hurry to push on
to the southward, Colonel Lewis and his men advanced up the Kanawha River toward the
rendezvous point. On October 10, 1774 the Shawnee confederation under Cornstalk
launched a surprise attack on Lewis’s militia at the mouth of the Kanawha River near
Point Pleasant. Lewis and Cornstalk both had about 1,000 men under their command, and
it was difficult for either side to gain a substantial advantage. However, after a terrific
battle lasting most of the day, the Indians eventually withdrew and Lewis’s troops
claimed the victory, without any assistance from Dunmore and his army. Hostilities
between white settlers and the Indians along the Virginia frontier ended for a time, only
to flare up again during the years of the American Revolution, when most of the western
tribes allied themselves with the British against the Virginia settlers.
Around the year 1761, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian from Mecklenburg County,
North Carolina settled just south of the present-day city of Fort Mill, in what is now York
County South Carolina, on the historic Nation Ford Road, which was part of the Great
Pennsylvania Wagon Road. Local tradition holds that the Catawba Indians gave Thomas
Spratt a tract of land five miles square, or 16,000 acres in size, to live on. Local tradition
also states that the Catawbas gave Thomas Spratt his nickname “Kanawha” for his
bravery during an engagement on the Kanawha River during Dunmore’s War. However,
the Catawbas were not actually present at the Battle of Point Pleasant, as confirmed in a
letter from their chief King Prow to Lord Dunmore in April 1775,1 so it seems likely that
Spratt actually earned his title during the Cresap expedition of June-July 1774. Another
possibility is that Spratt volunteered for service with the Virginia militia under Colonel
Lewis in August or September 1774, and that he was given his nickname because he was
present at the Battle of Kanawha or Point Pleasant in October of that year.
Spratt’s military service continued during the Revolutionary War. Along with
some of the Catawba warriors, he served under Major William Richardson Davie and
General Thomas Sumter in the Patriot victory at Hanging Rock in Lancaster County on
August 6, 1780. Spratt was also with Davie at the Battle of Wahab’s Plantation, in Union
County, North Carolina, on September 21, 1780, where Davie’s troop made a bold attack
on a British outpost and routed the enemy in a skillful engagement, capturing a large
number of horses and supplies in the process. The elderly Spratt, now over 50 years of
age, received several bullet wounds in his right thigh during the battle, including a shot
that grazed his thigh bone.
“Kanawha” Spratt died in 1807 and was buried in a family cemetery near Fort
Mill. His tombstone bears the following inscription:
IN MEMORY OF THOMAS SPRATT, KANAWHA, WHO DIED JULY 21, 1807, AGED 76 YEARS.
BORN ON SHIPBOARD COMING TO AMERICA WITH HIS PARENTS.
IN FRIENDSHIP HE WAS EVER TRUE, HIS HEART SINCERE, LIKE HIM BUT FEW;
HIS BLOOD WAS SPILT IN FREEDOM’S CAUSE, RATHER THAN SUBMIT TO BRITISH LAWS.
From an ancient Indian tribe in Delaware to a river in west Virginia, from an important
colonial battle to an early Fort Mill settler, the word “Kanawha” has taken root on the
York County landscape and survives today as a fitting tribute to the memory of Thomas
“Kanawha” Spratt.
1
The Catawbas had been accused by members of the colonial Virginia government of having been allied
with the Shawnees against the Virginians, and of having fought alongside the Shawnee at the Battle of
Point Pleasant. Considering the long-standing hostility between the two tribes, the idea was (and still is)
ludicrous, but nonetheless King Prow sent a very diplomatic letter to Lord Dunmore explaining that his
people were at home in their villages on the Catawba River at the time and were nowhere near the battle.